Change PAN Jurisdiction–Assessing Officer

PAN or Permanent Account Number is the unique 12 digit alpha-numerical identification number given to all the tax payers by the Income Tax Department / CBDT. If you have income above Rs. 2.5 lakh and more you will have to file income tax return for which PAN is mandatory. Once you have PAN, all your bank accounts will be linked to Aadhaar, enabling the Income Tax Department to identify and ascertain details about volume of your transactions and whether you are filing the income tax return if your income is above the basic income tax limit etc. Each tax payer with unique PAN number will be assigned a Assessing Officer (AO) by the Income Tax Department. For all income  tax related queries pertaining to your PAN, you need to consult your Assessing Officer regularly, respond to any notices sent by the Assessing Officer etc.

The Problem:

Now consider a case wherein you have applied and allotted PAN by the Income Tax Department based on the permanent address mentioned by you at the time of your application. However, suppose you have shifted your permanent address sometime later, now what will happen to your PAN jurisdiction? Will it change automatically? I wish it does! But unfortunately, it doesn’t. We haven’t advanced so much yet . Hence whenever you shift your permanent address to a new place, your PAN jurisdiction will still lies with the jurisdictional Assessing Officer under whom you are allotted to be assessed when you were first allotted your PAN. This is a serious problem if you were to re-locate to a place which is distant from your previous permanent residence address. Suppose you receive any notice with regard to assessment proceedings or about processing of your claim for refund or any other such communication for which you have to produce yourself before the Assessing Officer, this would be a daunting task for you considering the fact that you need to attend these all the way from your present address.

Solution:

The simple solution to this problem is to get your PAN jurisdiction transferred to the place where you have shifted. If it doesn’t have an income tax office, nearby town or city under which jurisdiction your current place of residence falls within. As of now, there is no way to transfer or change PAN jurisdiction of income tax online. The only way to get your PAN or Assessing Officer (AO) jurisdiction transferred to a new place is to write a letter to your present Commissioner of Income Tax (CIT) under whose charge your present Assessing Officer /Ward/Circle is located with a copy to your present jurisdictional Assessing Officer. However, this process first requires that you identify the jurisdictional Assessing Officer to where you PAN needs to be transferred. Often, this is very much tricky as most of us don’t have the jurisdictional breakdown of Income Tax Department. You can locate the jurisdictional Assessing Officer based on your present location by accessing the jurisdiction details of various states/charges of the Income Tax Department across India by clicking here.

Example: Suppose you are an individual salaried employee located in Chennai and assessed for income tax at Chennai. Now Chennai is the place where your original PAN jurisdiction lies. Now assume that you have moved into a new job located in Bangalore. You would want to get your PAN jurisdiction and Assessing Officer migrated to Bangalore. To do this, first note down the jurisdiction details of the present Assessing Officer. You can do this by accessing PAN jurisdiction page. Also, you need to find out the jurisdiction details of the Assessing Officer (ITO Ward / ACIT/DCIT Circle) Karnataka (Bangalore) by clicking here. Scroll down to find your alphabet (of Surname/First name of your name) or by location. If your income returned is less than Rs.20 lakh, your jurisdictional AO will be Income Tax Officer (ITO Ward) else you will be assessed with Assistant or Deputy Commissioner of Income Tax (ACIT/DCIT Circle).

For instance if your name is Anand are an employee of a private company based and you reside in Bangalore, from the above jurisdiction chart, your PAN jurisdiction will have to be transferred to the Assessing Officer: ITO, Ward-5(3)(1), under Principal Commissioner of Income Tax –5 (Pr.CIT-5), Bangalore. Now you need to find the address of the offices of the Principal Commissioner and the ITO. Do a Google search for Pr.CIT-5, Bangalore and you will easily find the directory of the Income Tax Department of Bangalore. From the directory locate the address of the office of the Commissioner of Income Tax-5.

From the above page in the directory, we can easily find the address of the Pr.CIT-5, Bangalore: BMTC Building, 5th Floor 80Ft Road, 6th Block, Koramangala, Bengaluru-5600095.

Again, from the same directory, I could locate the address of the ITO, Ward-5(1)(1): No.59, HMT Bhavan, 4th Floor, Ballari Road, Ganganagar, Bengaluru – 560032.  The same process may be followed for finding out the addresses of the current jurisdictional Assessing Officer and jurisdictional Commissioner of Income Tax.

Now that you have located the addresses of the current jurisdictional Assessing Officer and also that of the AO to where your PAN to be migrated, let’s now see the format of the letter that your need to write and send to the office of the Principal Commissioner where your PAN jurisdiction lies at present with a copies marked to the current jurisdictional AO, to the Commissioner of Income Tax and the Assessing Officer to where the PAN jurisdiction to be transferred.

PAN Transfer of Jurisdiction / Assessing Officer – Letter in Word Format:

In order to make it simple for you, we have prepared a sample letter format in MS-Word which you can use for writing application for transfer of PAN. You can download the letter in Word format from here.

Once you have completed the letter, take a print out, sign on it. Then either send it through post to the office of the Pr.Commissioner or if you have time, you can directly submit the application at the office in person. A copy of the same letter to be submitted to the AO of the Income Tax Ward/Circle where you are currently assessed. Send remaining two copies to the new jurisdictional Commissioner of Income Tax and to the new jurisdictional Assessing Officer. The remaining process will be done by the Assessing Officers and your PAN will be migrated usually within a time of around 2-3 weeks depending on the number of working days. If your PAN hasn’t got transferred even after 1-2 months of submission, you can file a grievance petition with the department which will ensure that your PAN transfer to new jurisdiction is completed within reasonable amount of time. The procedure of filing online grievance petition (known as e-nivaran petition) will be dealt with in a separate post later.

Please let us know, if you have any questions regarding PAN migration or change/transfer of PAN jurisdiction to new Assessing Officer.